Banning Books

In 2014, the University of South Carolina Upstate and the College of Charleston faced backlash for including gay themed books to their freshman reading programs. The negative reactions were from the politicians in South Carolina. State representative, Garry Smith, proposed to cut approximately $70,000 from the universities after learning that no other book themes were offered to the incoming freshmen. 

The books that sparked this outrage were Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio” which included personal narratives. The two books focused on the author’s personal experiences of being gay and coming out. 

Smith insisted that he “understands diversity and academic freedom” but the assigned books “forced an agenda on teenagers and were a promotion of a lifestyle with no academic debate”. The legislators voted to cut $17,000 for the purchases of Out Loud and $52,000 for Fun Home. 

As a result, students of the universities began to protest Smith’s proposal. In addition to the protests, a campaign movement called “Writers Speaking Out” was started by Hub City Press, the publishers of Out Loud. Many authors visited the universities to speak on the issue. One of the authors present for the campaign was Alison Bechdel. 

This censorship issue reminded me of John Stuart Mill’s essay on liberty. Specifically, the statement: “minority opinions not being articulated”. The proposal to cut funding from the two universities due to the disapproval of their choice of book themes also silenced members of the LGBTQ+ community.

As mentioned earlier, Smith claims his outrage was due to the lack of other book options offered to the incoming freshman class. However, the University of Charleston provides a list of the previous books chosen for the reading program. Since 2002, there has only been one book option. 

The list includes the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Foer. In this book, the author provides insight about the morals and consequences of eating animals. If Smith’s main concern was about pushing different lifestyles on students, he would’ve spoken out about this book as well.